Remember me?
The forgotten one with the penchant to help lost souls, even though I my self am lost? They say that that which does not kill you only makes you stronger…or makes you mad enough with a vengeance to find that which tried to kill you in the first place.
Am I mad? Am I mad because I have tried to find that very thing…Death. Death is no stranger to me. He comes to me in the middle of the night to steal away the only ones I truly loved. My mother. My father. My precious, beautiful, princess, Carrie. He stole them right from my very grasp.
Yes, I mourned for my mother and my father. But not nearly as deeply as I have mourned for my Carrie. Some say circumstances change people, sometimes down to the very core. And I am not the same man that I was ten months ago. Not the same gentle, kind, loving soul who would literally give the shirt from his very back to one in need. No, I am much different now. More callous, and cautious. Carrie’s death saw to that. I have now become what American folklore refers to as a “hermit”. Living in my ruins of ashes and dust. Venturing out ever so often to see what else this world can do to me. Perchance waiting here in the ruins for my beloved Carrie to return to me.
I still talk to her you know? Does that make me mad or crazy? To talk to someone that you have loved and lost. Or are you the crazy ones simply because you cannot see or hear her? And she answers me every time we talk. Oh, not in the normal way that you and I would converse, but on a level of the mind that most humans forget is really there.
I hear the water running in the tub in the evenings, the way it always did when she was getting ready for her nightly bath. Sometimes, I still see her, plain as day, sitting on the sofa on the front porch afterwards painting her toenails.
Maybe it’s just guilt. The guilt that it should have been me lying in that grave I January. Or maybe it’s selfishness. That’s it. It is selfishness. Selfish thoughts and questions, like, “Did she still love me even at the end?” Or, “Did she blame me for what happened to her?” “Did I react fast enough when it all happened?” Somehow my mind and heart need these answers. But when I talk to her, she never gives even the slightest of clues. She wants to talk of the good times we shared. About how much fun she had to see her family when we went to New Jersey for Christmas
by T.L.Canipe
from "Rantings of a Madman"
pages 1 & 2
